Conflict Resolution
for a Magickal Community
by Emily Carlin
Conflict is a natural and inevitable part of life. We argue with a friend, disagree with a co-worker, or a fight with a parent. If you are a part of a school, coven, or any larger community, most likely you have seen your share of conflict. Whenever people with their own thoughts and feelings come together for a common purpose, they eventually come into conflict. How to best accomplish a common goal and how to behave during that process tends to reveal conflicts. As much as we’d like to think otherwise, the magickal community is not above this sort of behavior.
Whether you are directly involved or are only witness to a conflict, it can create stress. An unresolved conflict can ruin your day—and the day of others if you take that stress out on the people around you. It’s rarely a good thing. When you’re a magickal practitioner, the stress and tension of conflict can have a far deeper impact. Those who practice magick have been trained to make their thoughts and intentions go out into the world and manifest themselves. After all, that’s what magick is. At the best of times, it takes practice, concentration, and a clear head to make sure what you get is what you intended and only what you intended. When a practitioner is in the midst of an ongoing conflict, it can throw off that delicate balance. At best, these challenges with friends, family, co-workers, or other practitioners are distracting and reduce the effectiveness of our magick.. At worst that imbalance can manifest itself as unintentional negative thoughtforms or hexes (but that’s a problem for another day). Therefore, it is incredibly important that all people who practice magick take the time to learn how to deal with conflict thoroughly, efficiently, and productively so that we can maintain our equilibrium, our control, and our happiness.
The first step in dealing with conflict is to bring it out into the open. It is far too easy to slip into anger and resentment in a one-sided conflict. People rarely want their actions to breed conflict, but they can’t do anything about it if they’re never told it’s happening. Letting something bother you and never saying anything does nothing but reinforce the actions that trouble you and make you miserable. Most people, particularly those working toward being a part of a happy and productive community, want to know when their actions have negative effects on those around them. Nobody wants to be the bad guy.
Acknowledging a conflict exists, the first step in resolving a conflict, can in itself create conflict. Bringing a problem out into the open might expose thoughts and feelings that you’d rather keep hidden, but in the end it is the only way to actually solve the problem. Be brave and face potential conflicts, rather than hiding from them. Respect the other members of your community enough to call them on bad behavior and give them an opportunity to do something about it. Once a conflict is brought out into the open, there are a few simple things you can do to help resolve the situation fairly and effectively.
There are three basic techniques that will help you to help yourself and your community when conflict arises: recognizing a position from an underlying interest, taking the time to check your understanding and the understanding of others, and validating and respecting emotions without buying into them.
Positions vs. Underlying Interests
A position in a conflict is what a person is asking for: what they want to happen or what they want someone else to do. They are often statements like “I want you to buy the decorations for our next event” or “I think that we should all submit proposals for Pantheacon events this year.” A position is the means by which someone hopes to accomplish his or her ends.
An underlying interest is the root motivation behind a person’s positions—the reason those positions were proposed. These deeper interests are often very basic needs, such as the need for respect, safety, or to feel valued.
One of the difficulties in distinguishing between positions and underlying interests is that we often don’t consciously understand what our underlying interests are. We can determine someone’s underlying interest by starting with the position being proposed and asking why. If Rowan asks Pat to go to the store, ask why. Why does Rowan want something from the store, and why should it be Pat who goes? Is it that Rowan just wants something and doesn’t feel like getting it, or is it something else? Or is Rowan asking because she feels like Pat hasn’t been pulling his weight in the group? Why does Rowan think that Pat’s going to the store will fix that? Ask why and dig deep to find the real underlying motivation for the position.
You’ll know you’ve hit on an underlying interest when you ask why and there is no other answer but the interest itself. For example, if the underlying interest is respect, there isn’t an answer to “Why do you want respect?” that goes beyond “Because respect is important to me.” Underlying interests are basic universal values. You don’t really need to ask someone why they want to feel loved or safe.
Let’s look at these concepts in action. Pretend that we have a magickal group called Coven of the Sacred Star. This is a small group with only about eight people, two of which are Skye and Riley. For the last few months, Skye has bought nearly all of the supplies for the group’s workings (candles, herbs, spell components, etc.) and Riley hasn’t pitched in at all. The week before the group’s next meeting, Skye calls Riley and tells him that he needs to buy the supplies for that meeting. Riley, feeling rather put out, says no. There is our conflict. Skye’s position is: “Riley needs to buy next week’s supplies”; and Riley’s position is: “Skye should continue to buy the supplies.” In this case, Skye’s position initiated the conflict, so let’s look at her underlying interests. Why does Skye want Riley to buy the supplies? Skye feels that it isn’t fair for her to buy the supplies every week while Riley buys nothing. Why doesn’t she think that’s fair? She doesn’t feel like her contribution to the group is being appreciated when people just assume that she’ll keep paying for things without even asking her. Why is that a problem? Skye doesn’t feel like she’s being respected by the rest of the group, particularly Riley. There we have Skye’s underlying interest: the need for respect.
Distinguishing between positions and underlying interests is critical in a conflict because, while positions can only be agreed to or refused, underlying interests can be satisfied in many different ways. In the scenario above, Riley will either buy the supplies or he won’t, but perhaps there’s another way to meet Skye’s need for respect. What if instead of going up to Riley and making a demand of him, Skye had said, “Riley, I don’t feel right about how everyone always assumes that I’m going to buy the supplies. It feels like my contribution to the group isn’t being respected. We need to change things so I don’t feel like I’m being taken for granted.” That would have created a completely different conflict, one where Riley doesn’t feel he’s being attacked, guilt-tripped, or put upon—and one where there are many possible solutions. Arguing over a position versus arguing over an underlying interest is the difference between a fight—one winner and one loser—and an important discussion between reasonable people.
Recognizing people’s underlying interests is critical to the healthy resolution of conflict. When everyone in a conflict feels respected and has their underlying interests addressed, then everyone wins and the community is better for it.
The most common cause of conflict is miscommunication. In a conflict, emotions tend to run high and we don’t always speak as clearly as we think we do. Those same emotions can color our understanding of what others say; our expectations and imaginings of what other mean becoming what we believe they actually said. Misunderstandings can reduce even the most reasonable and sophisticated people to squabbling children. While such miscommunications cannot be avoided altogether, they can be greatly reduced by simply taking a step back.
When emotions are heated, you have to take the occasional time-out to make sure what you’re hearing is the message they meant to communicate—and that they actually understand what you were trying to communicate in response. To do this, simply paraphrase what you understand the other person’s argument to be and let them correct you if you misunderstood. Then have the other person paraphrase what he or she thinks you meant to say and clarify as necessary. Do this until everyone agrees that people have understood what they meant to communicate. It takes some time to do it right, but uncovering a misunderstanding early in the conflict-resolution process is well worth the effort.
When you reflect back someone else’s argument, it is crucial that you do so honestly and respectfully. You have to genuinely want to understand what they’re trying to say or your effort will come off as mockery. For example, here is a good way check your understanding: “What I’m hearing is that you don’t want us to do a public Samhain ritual because you don’t think we have enough practice to do a good job. Is that what you meant?” A bad way to do so would be: “Look, you’re saying that you just don’t want to a public ritual because you think we’re not good enough. Is that it?” The first statement is respectful and tries not to make assumptions. It leaves room for the person on the receiving end to correct misunderstanding. The second statement is combative and disrespectful and will likely make the person on the receiving end defensive and unreasonable.
Checking your understanding is critical for both correcting our own misunderstandings and correcting what you may have misspoken. People often don’t say what they intend to under the best of circumstances, and the emotional tension and speed of an evolving conflict is hardly an ideal circumstance for clearheadedness. You will say the wrong thing at some point. So will everyone else involved in the conflict. When you check your understanding, you give the other person in the conflict a safe space to correct what he or she may have misspoken while saving face.
Respecting Emotions without Buying into Them
In almost any conflict worthy of the name, you will run into emotions. Strong feelings like anger, sorrow, betrayal, and grief are unfortunately common. Such strong emotions often muddle our thinking and can make resolving a conflict extremely difficult. The best way to deal with such feelings is to validate and respect them without actually taking them on ourselves. Just because someone else is feeling a strong emotion doesn’t mean that we have to.
Emotions are deeply personal experiences that an individual has in a given moment and they are always valid. Emotions aren’t right or wrong; they are what someone is feeling, regardless of whether we think that’s reasonable or appropriate. Emotions are always real to the person experiencing them. Never, ever invalidate or belittle someone else’s emotions. It is a surefire way to assure that you will be reduced in that person’s eyes from a member of their community to “the enemy.” Making the effort to recognize someone’s emotional experience in a conflict shows that you care and respect that experience. It’s not only kind, it’s essential to making the other person feel heard and respected.
That’s as far you need to take your recognition of someone else’s emotions. As said above, emotions are merely an individual experience in a given moment. You can respect someone’s experience without agreeing with it or going so far as to take that emotion on to yourself and feel it with them. If you feel yourself becoming too involved in someone else’s emotions take a step back and remain objective. Getting outraged on a friend’s behalf might look supportive of them, but in reality it doesn’t help solve the problem at all and can, in fact, make it worse. It’s up to you to decide what’s more important in a given situation: showing empathy for a friend or remaining objective enough to think clearly.
For Further Study:
Brinkman, Rick, and Rick Kirschner. Dealing with People You Can’t Stand. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002.
Cloke, Kenneth. Mediating Dangerously: The Frontiers of Conflict Resolution. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001.
Fisher, Roger, and William Ury. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. New York: Penguin Books, 1991.
McLeod, Saul. “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.” http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html.
Stone, Douglas, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen. Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most. New York: Penguin Books, 1999.